SHANNON MCGOWAN PHOTOGRAPHY
Storytelling
I have been exploring and writing for Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine since 2018, a free magazine covering everything in the outdoors in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast region of America.
All stories below include original photography and videography.
Elk Restoration Efforts Are Thriving in Appalachia
It isn’t necessary to travel out west to hear the beautifully haunting sound of an elk bugle echo through the mountains. Elk restoration efforts are taking place in certain parts of Appalachia, where abandoned mine lands are being turned back into a natural habitat for these native animals.
Type 1 Rad
Meet Cassandra Lubowsky, aka “The Big Lubowsky,” a lively outdoor guide with experience in just about every outdoor sport: rafting, mountain biking, climbing, backcountry camping, and kayaking. She thrives on challenging herself through adventure, but her greatest challenge of all? Dealing with Type 1 diabetes.
Mountain Bike World Cup Circuit Race Returns to Snowshoe Mountain
The Superbowl of the mountain biking world is coming back to the South.
Reeling and Healing
It’s easy to understand the appeal of fly fishing to nature lovers.
The meditative repetition of casting and reeling while standing in the midst of serene wildlife brings much-needed peace and escape from our fast-paced reality. But something that isn’t as easy to understand is cancer. The emotional toll it brings upon its victims and their loved ones can be harder to see than the physical toll. Stewart “Stu” Brown understood both the peace in fly fishing and the hardships of cancer. Diagnosed with a brain tumor, Stu devoted his last few months of life to helping other men dealing with cancer “experience the healing serenity that fly-fishing had offered him.” Thus; Reel Recovery was born.
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Women’s Wednesday: Rapha Women’s 100
“What are you doing this weekend? Want to come ride 62.1 miles on the Cap Trail with me and a bunch of other rad ladies?” These were the surprisingly un-sarcastic words of my dear friend Emma Troy, a bike mechanic at Cary Town Bikes who finds any excuse to get on a bike just about every day.
No Fracking Way
Union Hill residents fight environmental racism in location of pipeline compressor station.
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​In May of 1968, voices demanding economic justice and civil rights could be heard as protestors marched through Richmond for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s historic Poor People’s Campaign. 51 years later, “We are one!” could be heard on that very same route across the Robert E. Lee Bridge.
